Want Google rankings? Build up your links!

You probably know there are three “pillars” of search engine optimization: content, architecture and links. You optimize your content based on the keywords that are popular with your target audience, you create a site architecture that is conducive to high search rankings, and you attract inbound links that point to your site.

All three work in concert to drive search traffic to your site. But of these three pillars, it's linking that is typically the most underdeveloped — despite the fact that Websites' search rankings are so utterly dependent on Webmasters linking to your site. No links equals no traffic.

Links are at the foundation of the search engines' algorithms. Google, Yahoo! and Bing all employ a methodology for assigning an importance score to each Web page by counting and valuing each link. Links act like votes, votes that help the engines ascertain which sites are worthy and which are worthless.

It's not just a sheer numbers game: Google's PageRank algorithm factors in the importance of each link using a weighting factor calculated by analyzing the interconnectedness of all Web pages.

In other words, all votes are not created equal. The Web — at least the one accessible through search engines — is better described as a meritocracy rather than a democracy. A link from an “important” site such as CNN.com will count for much more compared to a link from Jim-Bob's personal homepage.

Tactically improving the PageRank of a site's homepage and its key internal pages is critical to being well ranked and thus to getting traffic. But in order to improve something, you have to be able to measure it.

That's where the Google Toolbar comes in. Available for free at http://toolbar.google.com, the Google Toolbar installs into your Web browser — either Internet Explorer or Firefox. Once installed, the Google Toolbar sports a small PageRank meter that indicates the importance of the page currently being viewed.

Hover your cursor over the meter and a numerical score between 0 and 10 will be displayed — with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best. Don't be mistaken: A 5 is not a middle-of-the-road score. That's because PageRank scores are on a logarithmic scale. As such, the effort required to move from a 7 to an 8 is monumental compared with that required to move from a 3 to a 4.

There is another metric for measuring link importance/authority that comes not from a search engine, but an SEO firm. Similar to Toolbar PageRank, this score, called mozRank, is based on a close equivalent to Google's PageRank algorithm and is available through SEOmoz's Linkscape tool (www.seomoz.org/linkscape).

Why bother with an approximation when you can have the real thing from the Google Toolbar, you might ask? Because the mozRank scores are more current, reliable and precise than the PageRank scores that Google makes available via its “toolbar servers.” PageRank scores that Google “exports” are truncated and can be months old by the time they are displayed in the meter.

That's why newly published Web pages will display no PageRank in the meter for a number of weeks. I just don't trust the PageRank meter, so it's nice to have an alternative.

Link building basics

The discipline of gathering high quality links and boosting your PageRank is referred to as “link building.” Link builders can garner links from any number of sources — including vendors, clients, business partners, sites related to your industry, general directories such as Yahoo, and nonprofit organizations sponsored by your company, to name a few.

Targeting topically relevant sites will earn you bonus points. Reciprocal links (i.e., “you link to me and I'll link to you”), on the other hand, are likely to be discounted.

Search engines have a comprehensive link map of the Web, so they can spot reciprocal links easily. Links from your affiliates are likely to be discounted too, as will “footer links” located in the footer at the bottom of the pages.

Some types of links are just bad news. Google warns not to link to what it calls “bad neighborhoods.” These include link farms and search engine spam sites. Do not respond to e-mails inviting you to get a link submitted to many thousands of search engines and directories.

At best, these sites are irrelevant. At worst, they consist of link farms and bad neighborhoods. The results of participation can be devastating and include ranking penalties or even the banning of your site.

How can you differentiate a link farm from a legitimate directory? A link farm has poorer organization and more links per page than a directory.

Directories have lost some of their luster too. Many of the directories out there are targeted not to Internet users, but to Webmasters, with their sole raison d'etre being to extract money from those Webmasters in the form of listing fees.

The value of links from such directories is dubious at best. Contrast this with listings in Yahoo's directory and the Open Directory (dmoz.org), where links are trusted by Google because of the rigorous editorial review governing each directory's listing process.

Generally speaking, the best links are obtained not through leveraging your existing relationships or outright buying them, but by earning them through merit by offering noteworthy, valuable content. When Webmasters and bloggers discover this content, they are inspired to link.

This is affectionately known as “link bait.” Irresistible link bait can take the form of scoops, exposés, humor, tools, downloads, how-tos, original research, event coverage, contests, quizzes or surveys, for example.

Not all links from a high PageRank-endowed page are equally as good. If there are many other links on that page linking to you, you will end up with only a small share of the PageRank that has been passed down, as you are sharing it with the multitude of other sites linked on that page.

Proactively solicit links carefully. Identify suitable targets by reviewing the links of competitive sites and sites in your keyword market. Suggest a link as a site visitor, or contact them representing yourself from your site.

If you represent a site visitor, offer them some additional constructive feedback besides inclusion of your link. For instance, in the same e-mail let them know of any broken links on their site that you have spotted, or of any other suggested links besides your own.

Offering a reciprocal link in exchange is not a viable approach, because their link to you will not be worth as much once the search engines pick up the fact that you link back to them.

You might also want to buy some text link advertising. If you do, it's worth working with a text link broker (such as Conductor), as these companies tend to have a large network of top notch, respected publishers with text ad inventory readily available.

If this approach sounds oversimplified, it is. The process is fraught with landmines; and the outcome is largely outside of your control — you can't dictate who links to you and who doesn't. But nobody said it would be easy!

Build outside the box

When link building, the trick is to take the road less traveled. Think differently. Be creative. You'll need to tap into your organization's best brainstorming if you hope to gain any real traction in your link building efforts. In this vein, I've included below just a few lesser-known, yet highly effective, tactics (I don't want to give too many of my secrets away!):

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